Category Archives: word tasting notes

amphithect

Posted on June 13, 2011 | 2 comments

On page 844 of volume 16 of the 1888 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, you will learn that ctenophores furnish examples of eight-sided amphithect pyramids. On reading this, you will of course think “Amphithect?”

You might from there go to a dictionary. If you do, hard luck for you: it’s not even in the Oxford English Dictionary. You might try to guess the meaning; the amphi will lead you to imagine it has to do with double-sidedness or something similar. But what about the thect? What the heck is that? Does it relate to tect as in architect? Nope. And good luck finding it in your handy little Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary.

You may find yourself down for the count or at least out of the court (the ct), just saying the word again and again, bouncing as it does across the various enunciatory positions – two lips /m/, lips and teeth /f/, tongue and teeth /θ/, back of tongue /k/, and finally tip of tongue on alveolar ridge /t/. Say it repeatedly and you make a neat circuit of your mouth. Pluralize it – amphithects – to get an extra fricative just to lubricate it further.

You can also play with the letters. Amp, hit, he; am, phi, the… match the pi, ham pith etc., at the chimp, hm – pathetic…

And while you’re doing that, perhaps your eyes will coast up the page a bit (page 844, remember? column 1) and see this:

In the highest and most complicated group, the Heterostaura, the basal polygon is no longer regular but amphithect (αμιθηκτος = double-edged). Such a polygon has an even number of sides, and can be divided into symmetrical halves by each of two places intersecting at right angles in the middle point, and thus dividing the whole figure into four congruent polygons.

An amphithect pyramid is thus one that has, for instance, a rhombus as its base. Which you would have learned earlier if you hadn’t gotten on the wrong bus, so to speak. But no wonder it was all Greek…

What? Ctenophores? Oh, yes, I’ll get to those next.

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clerestory

Posted on June 11, 2011 | 5 comments

If you don’t know this word, it’s no great surprise; it is circulated mainly among the clerisy (that is, the literati – people of learning and illumination, and in particular people of learning about illumination, especially architects). I first saw it in an article in The Buffalo News.

No, no, I’m not being silly. The article was on the new terminal for the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, at that time soon to be under construction (it’s been open for several years now), and for whatever reason it mentioned that the terminal was to have clerestories, but didn’t explain what they were.

I knew it had something to do with fenestration, but beyond that I was met with frustration. I also guessed that it was pronounced with four syllables, and wasn’t sure if the stress was on the first (/klɛ/) or the second (/rɛ/). So, of course, at my next chance, I looked it up. And the first thing I learned was that it actually has three syllables and is pronounced like “clear story”.

The second thing I learned, of course, was what a clerestory is: a high window, in this case (as often) a window in a raised section of roof that lets light into interior spaces – not a skylight, which is set into the roof without interruption, but rather one of those windows of which the archetypal image of a factory has many, giving its roof a sawtooth appearance. (In the original sense, it is a set of high windows in a cathedral that allow the centre of the nave to be well illuminated.)

So raise the roof! That shed sufficient light on the matter. But, now, how do we come to have this word in this form? Ah, well, it turns out the story for that is not quite clear. The clere is really an old spelling of clear, in this sense meaning “lit, light-bearing” because the sense “unobstructed” did not exist for clear in the early 1400s when this word was first written down. We would assume that the story is as in a level of a building (what we prefer in Canada to spell storey), but the problem is that that sense of story is otherwise unknown until a couple of hundred years later. So we don’t really know the story here altogether.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I find that the spelling of this word obnubilates or even obfuscates its morphology for me. I keep wanting to treat it like a word like refectory or consistory or conservatory; it makes me think as readily of clerisy and Clerihew as of clear. Habituation to clear and to the various -(t)ory words just makes a “clear story” pronunciation seem wrong, because I’m not really used to this word.

Mind you, the spelling clearstory does exist too. But, now, knowing that the spelling clerestory exists, most English speakers will feel by reflex that clerestory must be the “better” spelling precisely because it is the less expectable – the perverse historical development and present patterns of our spelling make us tend to think “marked” (irregular) forms must be more authentic, formal, better. (Hence, for instance, many people will think an historic must be correct, when in fact for anyone who pronounces the h it’s actually not.)  Such lines of thought make it desirable to have some means of shedding light into the middle of the messy factory floor of English usage.

Or the busy airport, if you will. Actually, as many Torontonians will tell you, Buffalo Niagara International Airport is nice for being considerably less busy than Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. And cheaper to fly out of if you’re going to the US. And even cheaper to get to if you take the bus. None of which has anything to do with clerestory in particular. But should you happen to go there, you will not need to look up clerestory. You can just look up.

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unctuousness

Posted on June 10, 2011 | 1 comment

Look at the letter forms in this word. Excepting the t, and maybe the e, they slip and slide around – curve up, curve down, curl, make a ring, slither…

The sound of the word, for its part, starts with a thickness and stickiness (that velar nasal and stop and alveopalatal fricative, the tongue pressing softly in the back and then sticking and rolling forward to release finally, gradually, at the tip, the whole experience like stepping forward through mud) and then, after stepping through the open door of the lips and leaving a pucker behind, it slips into a hiss. It makes me think of the stickiness and hissing bubbles of stove-top cream of wheat just when it’s ready, or perhaps of thermal mud pots like Iceland’s Hverarönd (I have some pictures at www.harbeck.ca/James/iceland/iceland3.html).

But this word’s object is not quite like mud, though close, and likewise not quite like cream of wheat, though close. It’s not sticky or viscous, but it’s thick, like fat. Unctuous, from Latin unctum “ointment” (from unguere “anoint”), means “oily” or “greasy”, though it has a rich luxuriousness that you don’t get from oily or greasy. Those are both lighter, more slippery words. This… this is like goose fat, great gobs of goose grease rubbed in loops and rings all over your body, u u u n n c o e s s s (with a little t where two dabs cross over in the middle).

Does that image make you uncomfortable? The object of unctuous may well too, since it’s often used to describe not a substance but, as it were, what we might call a lack of substance – an oily insincerity: you’re more likely to find voice than any other word next to unctuous. You know the voice – it’s smarmy, it’s dulcet but not delicious; it’s the speech of a funeral director, perhaps.

Amusingly, unctuousness, though viewed poorly in English, is seen from the better side in French. The French, as we know, are not afraid of fat; they appreciate rich foods (partly because they don’t eat like starving dogs). So, as Polly-Vous Français notes and I have observed myself, onctueux is often seen in French advertising for smooth, creamy treats, of which of course France has many. (Polly-Vous finds the overriding flavour of unctuous unappealing and unappetizing, which helps her to eat less rich food, she says.)

Still, unctuousness is a thick and rich word, in its way delicious on the tongue – as Jens Wiechers (who suggested this note) says, “it somehow grows on you after a while and you wait for a chance to use it.” But here’s a question: why not unctuosity?

Actually, both unctuousness and unctuosity have been in English since the fourteenth century. The Oxford English Dictionary gives a first citation for each from 1398 – because they’re both from the same book. And, over the centuries, there have been times when unctuosity was the more common word. But now unctuousness wins out.

There are linguistic fads, of course, and the figurative uses of this word may figure into the choice: unctuosity has often enough been used to refer particularly to an oily religiosity, and it has a better echo of religiosity. But for the material thickness, unctuousness surely wins in its feel; unctuosity has that longer, wide open vowel in the middle, and a quick tap of a /t/ after that. It’s sort of like the difference between, say, olive oil (unctuosity) and butter (unctuousness). And while I like olive oil, nothing beats butter.

Well, no, I’m not comparing it to Nutella, they’re different kinds of things, even if they both have a certain unctuousness… Ah, zut, et voilà, j’ai faim.

(Translation: Oh, drat, look, now I’m hungry.)

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plank

Posted on June 8, 2011 | 3 comments

As I was walking down the street, I encountered Marcus Brattle, my adolescent mentee. “Brilliant!” he exclaimed (that’s British for “Great!”). He pulled out a camera. “You came along at just the right time.”

I looked at him warily. “You have plans?” His plans typically translated into disasters or messes, often involving humiliation, sometimes mine.

“I’m the plan king!” He said. “In fact, I’m planking!”

Oh. The faddishness of youth. “Planking?” I said, disingenuously. “Is that short for public wanking?”

“Get over it,” he said. He pointed to one of Toronto’s newly installed racks of Bixi bikes, nearby on the sidewalk. “I’m going to extend myself like a plank across two of those bikes there, and you’re going to photograph it so I can post it.”

“Haven’t people gotten board of that fad yet?”

“It’s planks for the memories,” Marcus said. “People have planked on some remarkable things and in some remarkable places.”

“And fallen to some remarkable deaths,” I said. “It’s all just plankton for the whale of media fads.”

“It’s the exploratory spirit.”

“Sort of like a negative of spelunking,” I observed. “Going up and over instead of down and under. We get a spree of planking followed by spill and plunking. One might come to imagine that plunk is the past tense of plank.”

“Where does that leave plonk, then?”

“Plonk is cheap wine,” I said. “Possibly a play on vin blanc, though people do hear in it the sound of a cork being pulled or a bottle being, well, plonked on a table.”

“Onomatopoeia followed by I’m-a-gotta-pee-a,” Marcus said. It occurred to me that he had learned much from me, but probably not the right things. “And you can plink the glasses.”

“I don’t think anyone actually uses plink that way – for that it’s clink, but tiddly-winks and musical instruments do plink.”

“And where’s plenk?”

“There is no plenk. It’s plink, plank, plonk, plunk.”

“All based on sounds,” Marcus said. “After all, when you drop a plank on the floor, that’s the sound it makes: plank!”

It does, I thought. However… “Actually, the word comes to us by way of various French versions – modern French has planche – originally from Latin, probably related to plana, flat.”

“Well,” Marcus declared, “I’m the planna here, and I plan to be flat. On… those two bikes right there.” He indicated two bikes with about five feet of space between them. “You stand over there and take the photo when I’m ready.” He pointed to the other side of the sidewalk.

I took the camera and walked to where there was a good angle. Marcus grabbed one bike with both hands and swung one leg up onto the other. Then the other leg. “Alright,” Marcus grunted, “have you got it?”

“You’re sagging,” I said.

Just then a woman walked up and asked, “What’s he doing?”

I turned to her. “Planking.”

“Blanketing?”

“No, planking. Like salmon.”

“Sounds fishy to me. Anyway, I want to use one of those bikes.”

Just then I heard another grunt and turned to see Marcus collapsing onto the ground.

“Was that a plunk?” I said. The woman walked over to one of the bikes to take it away.

Marcus started dusting himself off and standing up. “Ow. Did you get a picture while I was holding it rigid?”

“Uh…” I looked at the camera. “Is blank close enough for you?”

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apologetic

Posted on June 8, 2011 | 3 comments

Coffee joints, aside from – or because of – being good meeting places, are also good places for people-watching, which of course also means linguistic observation. I was seated in the Metaphor Café awaiting the arrival of a few of my friends; at a table close by, a relationship was having a public rough patch. A young man who had clearly committed an indiscretion that he was sorry for having been caught in (but perhaps not for having done) was being as appropriately hang-dog as he could muster with his girlfriend. He seemed to have prepared a statement that he was reciting to her.

“It was a stupid thing to do,” he said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m apologetic for doing it.”

What a weasel, I thought. He couldn’t even commit to the actual speech act: I apologize. Saying that is in itself making an apology; it’s an act that is done by saying it’s done, like I promise or I declare or I pronounce you man and wife (something this pair seemed unlikely to hear in the near future). Saying I am promissory does not constitute a promise.

“You wiener!” the girl said.

Well, she got that pretty much right on, I thought. The guy’s probably cribbed his speech from Representative Anthony D. Weiner, who, on being caught out sending suggestive and flirtatious pictures to various women and lying about it, said (among other things) “I don’t know what I was thinking. This was a destructive thing to do. I’m apologetic for doing it.”

The girl continued. “I am sooooo angry with you!”

Ah, I thought. Now there’s a statement of emotional state. I’m angry and I’m happy and I’m sad have adjectival predicates that describe a person’s feelings. I’m apologetic is also phrased like an emotional state. But it’s not. It’s not I’m feeling bad. It’s just a state of being inclined to make apologies. It pretends that an apology has already been made. There is, however, one statement of emotional state that is, in the right context, also (and more actually) in itself a speech act of apology: I’m sorry.

“You can’t just talk it away, you know!” the girl said.

Ironic, I thought, since apology is from Greek ἀπό apo “away, off” and λογία logia “speaking”. It first referred to speech meant to explain and defend; now its common meaning is more in the line of what wolves do when they bare their throats – it’s a payment in the social economy of status and obligation exchanges; it acknowledges lower status and indebtedness. But apologetics also refers to an argumentative defence of a doctrine (the usual context is Christian).

The girl continued fuming. “It’s appalling behaviour!”

Appalling? I thought. Maybe Apollonian! Not just because apologetic sounds sort of like a blend of Apollo and exegetic but because in the schema proposed by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, the Apollonian is the mental, rational, organized contrast to the lusty, emotional, chaotic Dionysian. And this guy has clearly engaged in the Dionysian and is now trying to be as cold and Apollonian about it as he can. But, as Cassandra says in Agamemnon, “Ototoi popoi da! Apollo!” Which means something like “Augh WTF oh nooooes! Apollo!” Sometimes you just talk yourself into more trouble. And sometimes, as with Cassandra, nobody will listen to you anyway. (And don’t forget that olo in the middle of apology, which looks a bit like a rude gesture.)

“Appall— aw, gee!” the guy stammered, about as close to a real apology as he was likely to get. “It was just a text!”

“It was a tweet,” the girl said icily. “You twit.”

Apparently the young man, like Anthony Weiner, hadn’t realized the whole world was about to get a glimpse of whatever it was he was sending. Tweets are not private, not even when you tweet your privates.

The guy tried a new tack. He held out a beverage loaded with whipped cream. “I bought you a fancy triple-whip cap-frap-cinnamellatte. Cuz you’re my special sweetheart.” He tried a little smile and cocked his head.

Just then Jess arrived. She observed me observing. “Missing something good, am I?” she said, sotto voce.

At about the same moment, the girl, having taken the beverage, lashed its contents full-force into the guy’s face. I reflexively flinched back and, in so doing, knocked over what was left of my first cup onto the table and partly onto Jess. The girl stormed out, the guy stood there dripping, and Jess was simultaneously trying not to laugh her head off and looking down at the coffee stain on her pants.

“Oh,” I said to Jess, trying to keep a straight face and seizing the spirit of the moment, “I am apologetic.”

Jess raised an eyebrow and smirked a little. “Weiner.”

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trinitite

Posted on June 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

This is a word for crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s – a trinity of each, t t t and i i i, three crosses and three candles (are any other letters left? yes – other letters left: r n e). It taps on the tip of the tongue, with three allophones of /t/: affricated, aspirated, unreleased. All that softens are one liquid (half voiceless) and one nasal. And the e at the end is written but we never hear it.

So what is it, in its entirety? It reminds me of trinitrotoluene, which is usually shortened to TNT. But that’s small-time compared with what we’re dealing with here. The echo of trinity is true and lasting, but we are now facing death, the destroyer of worlds.

July 16, 1945. Trinity nuclear test site, New Mexico. A nuclear bomb is tested, leaving a lasting echo in history. Robert Oppenheimer is reminded of a (not quite accurate) quotation from the Bhagavad Gita: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” After the fire has glowed in an enormous bright ball, a destroying angel trying to ascend to heaven but at last turned into an enormous toadstool of smoke, and all has cooled down, a layer of glassy rocks is found covering the area. Trinitite – the mineral (-ite) of Trinity.

It’s almost pure silica (quartz), of course: the sands of time, softened into a liquid, fused into a glass. It has unmelted sand stuck to the bottom, and it has many bubbles in it. It was thought at first that it was caused by the sand being melted in place by the blast. Now it is thought that the sand was taken up into the heavens with the fireball and rained back down from the cloud.

If we look into this bubbly dark glass, only lightly radioactive, what will we see? Will we see graveyards, or candles? Will the answer to our questions be on the tips of our tongues, tapping three times? Will we see our aspirations, or will they be unreleased? Our end may be written, but will we hear it?

Perhaps we will see the verse from the Bhagavad Gita, which in Barbara Stoler Miller’s translation is

I am time grown old,
creating world destruction,
set in motion
to annihilate the worlds;
even without you,
all these warriors
arrayed in hostile ranks
will cease to exist.

Or perhaps we will just see what there is to see, a rock that was the sand, for which the hourglass (or quartz watch) has run out, and now it is fused. The future is already here. And what colour is it, this rock of the future, this future in the rock?

Green, as it happens.

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toad

Posted on June 5, 2011 | 5 comments

One of my colleagues from the Editors’ Association of Canada, Daphne Davey, moved last fall to a town in P.E.I. with the charming name of Crapaud. Naturally, she named her residence Toad Hall.

For those who don’t know French, I’ll explain: crapaud, aside from having a taste of crap that can hardly be more pleasing than the odour of toad, is in fact French for “toad”. And toad is a word that does not bring a whole lot of charm… except in connection with Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, in which a key character is a moneyed, mansion-owning, maniacal toad (named Mr. Toad) who goes on wild jags (his fanaticism for motor cars lands him in jail – I can’t remember if any car gets towed away, but Toad gets away with several). Toad Hall is the name of Mr. Toad’s abode.

But step away from that vehicle and you will find toads associated with little that is fun or appealing (save perhaps the band Toad the Wet Sprocket). Indeed, one might almost wonder whether toad stands for “take off and die”, given that it is commonly used by women as an epithet for unattractive men. (I am unaware of any similar use of it on women.) It also has a long literary history as a byword for a lowly, ugly, nasty, stupid person – Shakespeare used it several times, for instance.

What, after all, is a toad? An amphibian that appears to be covered in warts (they’re not really warts and you can’t catch warts from a toad) – a squat, croaking thing that is a byword for animal unattractiveness. Even the word plays into that; although the look of the written word toad is not abnormally homely (though, as Margaret Gibbs has pointed out, it’s “a short, fat, squat little word, sitting there with its mouth and eyes agape in the middle”), the word is capable of being said in a way that emphasizes the ugliness: the lips puckering out, possibly with the nostrils narrowing a little, as though expressing disapprobation at an unpleasant smell; the initial stop spits a little, and the final stop is voiced, so the vowel is held long enough that one may lower the voice to a croaky level, and it’s that round back vowel that is quite lacking in brightness.

Oh, and toads were formerly thought to be poisonous (now we know of some poison frogs, but frogs are much cuter). Charlatans and mountebanks hawking snake-oil nostrums for the cure of poisoning would have an assistant who would pretend to eat a poisonous toad so that he could be cured by the elixir. From this, someone in a servile or sycophantic role was called a toad-eater, and this was shortened later to toady (as in fawning lickspittle toady).

This word and its imagery lend their flavour, in fact, to an assortment of different compounds. After all, it’s a convenient, short word (straight from Anglo-Saxon tadige; the Latin is, incidentally, bufo – that seems somehow suited, too, doesn’t it?), naming a common enough creature that may be associated with various things. So the OED gives us, among others, toad-fish, toad-flax, toad-back, toad-bellied, toad-blind, toad-cheese, toad-flower, toad-grass, toad-head, toad-housing, toad in the hole, toad-legged, toad-marl, toad-poison, toad-pond, toad-pool, toad-rush, toad’s bread, toad’s eye tin, toad’s-guts, toadskin, toad-snatcher, toad-spawn, toad-spit, toad-sticker, toad-strangler, toad-swollen, toad under a harrow, and toadwise. Among others.

Including, of course, toadstool. Which is not the tool of a toad, but rather (as you likely know) a mushroom. It’s also, in my personal history, an object lesson in getting what you pay for.

I’ll explain: at one time I was looking at some French translations that had been done by an agency which was, I believe, chosen for its, uh, fiscal efficiency. In an article on food poisoning, I noticed that toadstools had been translated as excréments de crapaud. Which would be “toad stools” (that’s stools in the medical sense).

Um, well, yes, crapaud crap would give you food poisoning, but, no, that’s not what we had in mind.

Thanks to Margaret Gibbs for suggesting toad in honour of Daphne Davey.

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chipmunk

Posted on June 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

This is a word from my childhood, in more ways than one.

There is of course that hoary old chestnut about a monastery opening a fish-and-chip shop with a fish friar and a chip monk; I’m sure I first heard that somewhere in elementary school.

But there’s also the actual animal, the chipmunk. I saw them often when we were hiking in the hinterlands (e.g., up to Lake Agnes, above Lake Louise). Cute little things, always darting and chattering and trying to get seeds and nuts (maybe not hoary old chestnuts) with which to stuff their cheeks.

And then there’s this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l5ap0p_3-o – that great old TV vignette series, Hinterland Who’s Who, in this case on the chipmunk. It has that wandering, wondering, almost haunting flute music. A more emblematic piece of Canadiana from the seventies could hardly be imagined. (But Hinterland Who’s Who has not gone away – it’s gone on web: learn more about the chipmunk at www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=86.)

And, of course, there’s that Christmas song from Alvin and the Chipmunks, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dnrosVyamY, featuring the step-out solo “Me, I want a hula hoop” (which in my younger years I couldn’t understand at all – “Mi, a waa na ooooo la oooo”?!). I regret to have to inform you that that, too, was more recently brought “up to date” – see www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjz8lG-SsnY , and I’m not surprised if, like me, you hit stop within a half minute.

I mean, seriously, the music is a trite guitar-heavy “rock” arrangement (the polar opposite of the Hinterland Who’s Who theme), and the chipmunks are dressed up like hip-hop homeys or something equally inane. Crap rock with hip-hop getup? Come on – if you want cute rodents with hip-hop, try this Kia ad: www.youtube.com/watch?v=miC1VZ9UVCQ.

And if you want a hip-hop singer named Chipmunk, by the way, there’s a bloke from Tottenham who will fill your bill: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDwI7KQAlD8.

But that of course has nothing to do with my childhood. Other people’s for sure, such as the ones writing the comments on the YouTube video. I might say, though, Chipmunk’s rapid rap has a certain chipmunkiness to it, and is about as immediately comprehensible to me as what I was hearing from those little seed- and scene-stealers in the hinterlands.

The rodent in question is of course not a monk, nor does it eat chips (well, OK, I think it ate some of mine at least once, but usually it goes for seeds and nuts). The present form of its name is almost certainly an English reconstrual of an Algonquian word – the Ojibwa word ajidamoonh “squirrel” (literally “headfirst”, because that’s how it goes down trees) is a very likely cognate.

The word chipmunk also has a quick and chattery feel to it, doesn’t it? It has two quick syllables and darts from one to the other. And hey, do this: say chipmunk chipmunk chipmunk chipmunk chipmunk chipmunk chipmunk chipmunk chipmunk chipmunk chipmunk as fast as you can. Look in the mirror and tell me it doesn’t look like a chipmunk chewing its seeds. Stuff your cheeks with snacks for an even more impressive effect.

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Okanagan

Posted on June 2, 2011 | 5 comments

A few weeks ago I was in the Tasting Tower at Summerhill liquor store in Toronto, an excellent place to give oneself an education in whiskey and wine (and to help pass the time, but don’t cause no accidents – after two samples, it’s “Baby, step back” with a light foot). I was rather amused, and my curiosity was piqued, at the sight of a bottle of Irish whiskey named O’Kanagan.

Oh! Come again? The name on the bottle is in all caps, too (see http://www.vinexx.com/Vinexx/Toorank_Distilleries.html), so the visual connection is immediate for most Canadians (especially western Canadians): Okanagan. As in the Okanagan valley in British Columbia.

Now, Okanagan sounds like “oak a noggin,” and since a noggin is (aside from being one’s head, in a usage parallel to mug for the same) a small cup or a small amount of alcoholic beverage, and since whiskey is often aged in oak (I believe O’Kanagan is, but I’d have to go back and taste it again to say for sure), this may seem appropriate enough. But, on the other hand, make it O’Kanagan and you’re most likely to shift the accent – to make the rhythm like that of “O Canada.”

But, hey, that’s the name, right? There’s an Irish family named O’Kanagan, so…

No, actually, it doesn’t seem there is. O’Kanagan Irish Whiskey is made in Ireland, true, but made for and branded by a Dutch company, Toorank. And it seems to be targeted at the Canadian market. And I can’t find any evidence of any actual Irish family named O’Kanagan.

It would be a funny coincidence if there were, anyway. Okanagan is not an Irish word. It’s from the First Nation (aboriginal, American Indian) people who were there first (and still are there, along with lots of other people by now). There’s some debate over its etymology, but it seems that (like oak a noggin, by coincidence) the source word contains a root meaning “head” – or “top end”. It may be “looking towards the upper end”, “seeing the top”, “transport towards the top end”, or something like that. It could refer to a local mountain, but it could also refer to the point on the Okanagan river, just below Okanagan Falls, that is the farthest up the river that salmon go when spawning.

Anyway, the current word is somewhat altered from the source (and the spelling Okanagan was set to differentiate it from the American place names spelled Okanogan). But its original sense and form are immaterial to most people who go there now. The word is agreeable as it is (OK and then some, a real AAA piece of work), with its opening O! like Oklahoma and the tongue then doing a double back-front touch, and it brings clear images to the minds of those who know it. Going up to the Okanagan is a retreat to a sunny vacationland with beautiful scenery, watersports, and lots of luscious things.

I mean fruits and berries. When I was a kid, it was a place for peaches (there’s even a town called Peachland) and similar succulents. It still is, but, as Wikipedia somewhat bitterly misphrases it, one of the fastest-growing industries in the Okanagan is “the ripping up of orchards and their replacement by wineries and vinyards” (I’m fairly sure that ripping out the orchards is not itself the fast-growing industry). Yes, if you’re having an oaky noggin in the Okanagan, it will most likely be a taste of one of the region’s many wines (not whiskeys), some of which are outstanding and most of which are at least quite good.

Indeed, not only wine production but wine touring as well is a staple of the economy there. And ever since I showed my wife Aina the region a few years ago, she’s been saying, “Oh, can we go again?” But gladly. So we made sure to stop through there on our latest trip west and visit a few more wineries. (See http://www.flickr.com/photos/sesquiotic/sets/72157626748240883/.)

But you do have to be careful – the wine can go right to your head! (And you might knock your noggin.)

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spatchcock

Posted on June 2, 2011 | 4 comments

Comic books have quite the variety of means of communicating violent sounds. They’re always in capitals, of course: WHAAAM, SLISH, THUNK, KHWOORMF, AKA-AKA-AKA… really a nearly endless variety of nonce onomatopoeia. It’s the print equivalent of the Foley artist’s job.

You know what Foley artists are, right? They’re those guys who create the sounds you hear in movies and TV shows when assorted things happen – a door is slammed, a person walks up stairs, someone gets punched, a slasher rips someone open… They accomplish some of this with little doors, pairs of shoes on wooden platforms, pieces of wood and/or leather; they also use more organic matter when it produces the best sound. Like in some horror flick. That disgusting sound made when a person is ripped apart might have come from, say, a chicken (ready for cooking) being roughly handled. Imagine the scene of gross horror that could take its sound from a chicken having its backbone ripped out and then slapped flat on a grill.

And now imagine what sound a comic book might use for that sound. Even a comic about a Foley artist. Or perhaps a comic book about a chef. After all, that is a way of preparing a chicken – ripping (or, well, cutting) the backbone out and laying the chicken flat on its inside for roasting. Do it in violent kung-fu style, and you’ll get quite the sound effect:

SPATCHCOCK.

Which just happens also to be the word for doing that to a chicken. (Butterfly is also used, and what a different word that is!) It’s a kind of preparation method that can produce quick results, since the chicken is flat – you can grill it rather more quickly than you could roast it intact. The whole thing may have a sort of quick-and-messy air to it. Certainly the word does, with the same kind of effect as slapdash or hatchet job. The incoming hiss /s/ has the effect of something speeding towards a surface, and the remaining consonants are all percussive, with a rebounding second syllable, but there’s that affricate right in the middle suggesting a mess…

Small wonder that spatchcock is also used to mean a quick stitch or patch job on something, a slap-together hackle-schmackle – an inappropriate interpolation of material in a text. Slapping it in like slapping a spatchcocked chicken on a grill.

And where do we get this sloppy word? Seems reasonable enough that the cock should refer to a chicken, and, come to think of it, spatch is short for dispatch, isn’t it… Such an easy surmise, so it’s no surprise that it was the commonly given etymology for a long time. But there is no conclusive trail of evidence to prove it. And there’s an older term (at least 200 years older), spitchcock, which is a means of preparing an eel (cutting it into short pieces and dressing it with bread crumbs and herbs). It’s very unlikely that the two words are unrelated, and no one really knows (yet) what the origin of spitchcock was. It’s kind of a mystery – a sort of horror mystery, really. Like from Hitchcock.

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